The present invention relates to a monochrome image outputting apparatus and a monochrome image producing method.
An apparatus has been described that generates a monochrome image having only one color component, such as Y and the like, in one pixel by weighing and adding the gradation value of each color in regard to each pixel in a color image having multiple color components, such as RGB and the like, in one pixel, taken by a digital camera (for example, refers to JP-A-2005-260504). This apparatus displays a green filter, a yellow filter, an orange filter, a red filter, and no filter as selectable items on the display, receives the selection of a filter to be used, and converts a color image to a monochrome image according to the weight that corresponds to the selected filter.
However, in the aforementioned filter, since black becomes the most highlighted color in all cases, it is not always possible to generate a monochrome image that fits a user's desire. For example, considering the case of monochromatically converting a color document where important characters are written in red and the other characters are written in black, the application of any of the above filters generates a monochromatically converted document where black characters have a prominent color and red characters have a color as dark as the black characters or lighter than the black characters, which results in important characters being made less prominent than desired.